1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates in general to portable radio devices and more particularly, to simplified communication devices.
2. Description of the Related Art
In today's marketplace, consumers have numerous portable radio devices, such as cellular telephones and personal radios, from which to choose. In order to enable the various functionalities of such devices, several manufacturers have developed innovative and capable user interfaces. For example, some manufacturers provide the facility of menu-driven operation, in addition to keypads that are integrated into mobile communications units. Others provide function keys that are assigned different functionalities at different times, depending on the functionality required while navigating the menus. The operation, which can be performed by pressing the function keys, is displayed on a display screen, and the user is able to make a selection from the options available.
Usage of the numeric keypads and menu-driven functionalities of a mobile communication unit requires that the user is able to understand and perform such actions, so as to get the device to function in the required manner. This makes such mobile communication units difficult to use for children, the elderly, and people with physical disabilities such as diminished eyesight, or those who are unable to perform complex actions by using small keypads or function keys.
Interfaces that incorporate technology such as speech recognition and text-to-speech impose complex computational requirements on the capabilities of the mobile communications units, such as software and digital signal processors. This, in turn, drives up the manufacturing cost of such units.